Stop worrying about how you can use social sites and tools to draw attention to yourself.

…

Stop focusing on metrics, start focusing on people.

Stop thinking that YOUR way is always the RIGHT way (looking for mirror on this one).

…

Stop trying to control how interactions happen and focus on facilitating them.

For libraries, I see some of the commentary applying beyond the use of social networking, and speaking to our industry’s culture, but of course I would ;).  Check out the whole post, and the comments.  It’s awesome.

What are you doing to participate with the population at large?  Have you been able to see outside of the view of social networking as advertising and attention getting, and to the core of connecting with people?  Is all of social networking getting a sanity check (thanks to lbraun2000 for the tweet on this article), or are the markets and organizations that are trying to capitalize/benefit from/perform outreach through on social networking getting the sanity check?

The best way to ameliorate the Me Me Me syndrome that comes from diving head first into social networking is participation.  While putting content out there is part of the process, it’s a full-duplex conversation, which means that you need to do some listening, too.  Chris Brogan, in this morning’s edition of his twice-monthly newsletter (you *need* to subscribe to his newsletter, seriously, here’s a sample so you can see why), communicates this so well:

Why Listening is the First Step

People want to get involved with social media. Why wouldn’t you? It’s inexpensive, has the capacity to bring more customers to your shores, provides a powerful set of tools (again, mostly free!) where you can express yourself, build reputation, and develop awareness. But MAKING media isn’t the first step in the journey, really. I propose that listening comes first, and here’s why.

People are talking about you. They are discussing your company, your products, your industry. No matter if the senior team wants you to start blogging because meanies might comment, there are meanies already out there saying things about you. But if you’re not listening, and not building a methodology to HOW you listen, and what you do with the information, what good is it?

So build your searches in Technorati, Blogpulse, Google Blogsearch, and Summize. Get your ears open, and start finding ways to report this back to the team so that they understand the pulse. And once this is fully understood and evolved, I believe the exercise of listening alone will give you ideas on how you might build a social media strategy for your organization.

Are people talking about your library? Why or why not? Where? What are they saying? Have you asked them about it?  Is it because of information you put out there, or are they talking about it without your starter content?  Put your ear to the ground, have the face-to-face and interactive online conversations (not just lurking!), and listen.  You might find that you aren’t in the places or having the conversations you need to be, or you might find that you’re right on target without even knowing it.  Let me know what you find, I’d love to hear it.

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Deets–

Topic: This session will cover social networking with video and the uses of seesmic for communication and art.

Philippe Lejeune has been experimenting with novel uses of seesmic and will discusses how he’s been using this fascinating service.

Location: MassArt, Alumni Conference Room, Tower Building, 11th Floor [directions]

Date/Time: Wednesday, June 18, 2008, 6:30pm - 9:30pm

Access: Free and open to the public, however, seating is limited

Notes: Bring a laptop w/ 802.11 wireless and/or Ethernet port if you want to follow along with parts of the seminar.

For more info contact David Tamés at Kino-Eye [contact form].

See also:

• Blog post about the session
• Register at Upcoming

Also note:
Next Boston Media Makers Meeting
Sunday July 6th at 10:00 AM
Doyle’s Cafe, Jamaica Plain, MA

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Bentley College - The Bentley Conference Center
LaCava Building, Third Floor, 175 Forest Street, Waltham, MA 02452

This is where I am today. I bartered my time as a volunteer for free registration, which meant that my library didn’t need to pay for it, but I did get time off from work to come, since it applies to my job, which is awesome.

You can view the entire schedule online, but this is how my schedule shakes out for the day:

9:15-10am:  Web Apps: The Collision of Design and Business - Jared Spool

10-11am: Volunteer at the registration desk

11am-12pm: Floater volunteer, just make sure everyone’s happy, well, and working properly

12-12:30pm: Lunch

12:30-1pm: Registration desk

1-1:45pm: Winning the Case for Usability-Tonya Price

2-2:45pm: Innovative Interfaces–Transforming Data Into Insight-Eva Kaniasty

3-3:45pm: Metaverses & User Experience-Stephen Denning

4-4:45pm: Moving Up the Usability Food Chain: A Cross-Disciplinary Holistic Viewpoint-Alex Conn

5-6pm:  Registration desk

6-7pm: Cocktail hour & networking

Should make for some very interesting postage later, when I have more time to iron out the wrinkled notes in my WordPress drafts.

There are several sessions that, upon reviewing the schedule, I decided I really wanted to go to because of their applicability to my job, and especially the project of redesigning the library’s web site.  However, upon reviewing the spiral-bound presentations book (which is brilliant, by the way), I decided on the better way to pick the sessions I would go to: sessions where the slides with the *least* text.  I want to see a presentation, and if you’re slides have so much text on them, what’s the point in going when I can just read your slides?

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The mission of the Commonwealth Corps is to engage Massachusetts residents of all ages and backgrounds in direct service to rebuild communities and address unmet community needs. The Corps will provide opportunities for skill building and leadership development and will encourage and enhance a lifelong civic vocation for Corps members. Corps members will provide direct service, build capacity, and recruit, organize and mobilize additional volunteers, thus building a grassroots movement of volunteers dedicated to service.

Nonprofit organizations and public entities are encouraged to apply to become Corps sponsors and host a team of 3 to 15 Corps members. The RFP provides Commonwealth Corps sponsoring organizations with the flexibility to structure service opportunities for full-time, part-time and flex-time members based on an annual service commitment.

A deadline for applications is not posted, but I’m guessing “the sooner, the better” is a good guideline to follow. There will be a series of free presentations to cover the program and application process in detail, as well as to offer an opportunity for questions. See the site for the schedule and how to register.

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Dear Reader Takeaways:

1. Don’t treat social networking like collecting business cards. Seriously, Social != (does not equal) Business [sometimes, maybe, but certainly not all the time].
2. Social networking is a [slightly] obnoxious term. Most hoity toity terms for things are, indeed, hoity toity. Not taking them so seriously is healthier.
3. LJ is full of “self-indulgent maxi-musings.” I agree, and it’s just not my scene, which is a big part of why I’ve all but abandoned it. It’s got it’s own culture, see?
4. Sometimes it’s better to be out rescuing a baby from a burning submarine than being online all the freakin’ time (I say, typing away at midnight on a Saturday… hey! Whatever, see, cuz I was out last night for shabu shabu then 2 hours of mead sampling, at work all day today, and I’m going to a craft/artist market tomorrow with Yelpers and then craft night with a whole other set of friends, so it’s my social night off this weekend!). Go out, get some sun, and talk to real people.
5. Random hash brown batches make interesting tweets. Especially to nomPr0n freaks like me.

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The first ever Boston Media Makers training session, dubbed a “Tech Tonic,” is coming up later this month, and it’s free!

Boston Media Makers presents Media Tech Tonic #1
What: Blogging with WordPress: A Crash Course
Where: Massachusetts College of Art and Design
When: Wednesday, May 21, 2008, 6pm - 9pm
Instructor: David Tames
Fee: Free and open to the public
Optional: Bring a laptop w/ wireless card
RSVP: david@kino-eye.com

Building and Room TBA (RSVP via email and you’ll be sent the room and location)

Agenda:
1. Setting up a WordPress blog
2. Basic care and feeding
3. Using a custom template and tinkering with a custom template
4. Questions and Answers
5. Resources for further study

If you’re in the Boston Metro area, and you’ve always wanted to know how to do this, sign up, since this is a FREE workshop taught by a super guy.

Other brief notes from the April meeting:

Steve is also pitching the idea of gutting this little internet cafe attached to the Apple store in downtown Boston and making it into a new social media meeting space… a trend that’s happening all over the world. I kinda think libraries should do this, too. I kinda think libraries are ideal spaces for this, if for no other reason than to continually prove to teens that we’re relevant, and give the 25-38 year old unpatrons a reason to come to the library.

Gravityland: apparently, episode 6 was written entirely by viewers! Nice.

Jason Praymus talked about Open Media Boston, which sounds super cool, and like a great, well-managed application of the future of user-generated content:

Open Media Boston is an online media outlet dedicated to regularly publishing fair and accurate news, views, arts, and entertainment content in text, image, audio and video formats from a progressive political perspective for the Boston, Massachusetts, USA metropolitan area. We are an audience-centered publication that will constantly solicit submissions and commentary from the general public using the latest social media technology while maintaining professional journalistic standards at all times. We will always strive to balance open participation with editorial control in the service of this goal.

Steve will be happy to know that, attached to this post, is the *super long* recording that I made of the April BMM with my snazzy new Zoom H2, acquired a PLA in March. It’s a whole different ballgame from a cutie little Olympus D-70 pocket digital recorder, and I’m still feeling out it’s maximum potential. Feel free to listen to (or even skim) the Twitter-style madness of one of our breakfasts!

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I found this post from an online marketing blog by way of a new mutual follower on Twitter, and gave it a quick read.  The interesting angle of the post is getting information you need to help your business, and how you may be able to outsmart your competition by using the tools intelligently.  It strikes me as treading that fine line of using Twitter for evil… but marketing isn’t always bad, and libraries could use some help with that.  Plus, these tools have non-library, non-marketing applications.

Of the five tools outlined, I’m really interested in:

• Summize:   May be the Twitter search people have been looking for.  I do love Twemes (I included it in the interesting experiment with hashtags for the PLA Blog during the national conference), Summize doesn’t require any tagging, it just searches tweets.  The advanced search is Google-esque, including options to find tweets with links, positive/negative tones, questions, and more.  Something exciting to play with.  Heck, I might start searching proactively for questions and answering them.
• Twitt(url)y:  All about tracking URL-based memes without needing to follow “the right people” on Twitter.  The most tweeted sites are at the top, each listing includes the popular link and recent tweets.  See what the Twitterati are reading and talking about, catch memes faster, learn about new things sooner, especially if your following group tends to be a bit… insular.
• Twistori:  Reminds you of the humanity of most of Twitter (you know, the part that isn’t trying to sell you something as of late).  Totally anonymous — unless you’re like Chris Brogan (nice new brand, btw, totally you) and follow so many people that you might recognize some of this stuff ;D — Twistori grabs data from Summize and lists out tweets that include “I love/hate/think/feel/believe/wish” statements and scrolls the new posts one by one on the screen.

Other things of note I’ve found in my travels:

• Twitter Answers: Um, why didn’t librarians build this?  Are we so obsessed with how broken our catalogs are that we’re missing the easy stuff like this?  If you’re a librarian playing around on Twitter Answers, do let me know.  It’s a sort of Twitter MetaFilter, built by Mosio, a service that allows people to text message a question and get answers from “real people” (where were librarians for this, too?).  Granted, when I work the Information Desk at my library, I tweet that I’m taking questions, and the answers I send out count towards my stats, and I know a few other librarians, like self-proclaimed guerilla librarian Connie Crosby, who do also.  But this is a whole application answering questions where people are.  I don’t have an account yet (I haven’t had time), but I’ll get on that soon, likely.  Librarians should consider this a form of outreach to let people know that librarians can answer questions like this.
• My Tweeple: Another mutual follower, Shannon Whitley, is working on one of a few new whitelist/blacklist apps for Twitter, and I kinda like this one.  When you’re receiving 10-50 new follower notifications a day, it can get quite unruly trying to figure out who everyone is.  Since most Twitter spammers pick up names from other large Following lists, it’s helpful to block spammers, but knowing who the spammers are is the trick.  My Tweeple helps with that.

It’s a struggle, keeping Twitter simple, and yet adding the features everyone craves.  Just take a look at the Twitter Fan Wiki, and you’ll see all the informational ruckus such an elegantly simple yet wonky system has created.  And this isn’t even touching the Twitter Packs concept (the online marketing post mentions sites that do the same “figure out who to follow” stuff mechanically), it’s a whole other ball of wax!

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I tend to be pretty selective about which sites I use, because I only use social networking tools that I really need. I’ll create an account on a new site, fuss around, check out the help, see who else is using it and why, and then decide if I want to pursue adding contacts and otherwise integrating it into my everyday digital life, or keep it on my mental shelf as a possible solution for something else later. Sometimes just a review from a trusted source is enough to tell me whether or not a social networking site is for me.

Once I’m there, my habits will depend on the site. I basically have different layers of stranger and privacy tolerance on different sites, and I tend to stay pretty true to the purpose, and culture, of the site, and my purpose for it.

• Twitter: I’m most likely to follow people I don’t know, or don’t know very well, on Twitter. My stream is open because the point of Twitter is sharing. Everything I say on Twitter is no-regrets, honest, and something that I would say out loud anywhere. I respect the right of people to lock their streams for whatever reason, but I feel it’s counter to the culture. I used to add locked streams all the time, but now I tend not too. I automatically block spam streams (all links, only there to advertise/pimp/push some site or service, no real interest in relationships, only half-duplex in content), so that I don’t appear in their following list (which helps deter other spammers), and they can’t try to add me again.
• LinkedIn: I only ever add people I can actually vouch for professionally. This means I know you, I’ve known you a while, I’ve worked with you, seen/appreciated your work, and/or I have some other evidence that you are a trustworthy source for *professional* networking and referral. I don’t add people who I’ve just met, who I’ve never worked with, or based on reputation. It’s a professional space, and I take it seriously.
• Facebook: I add friends. Actual, real, dyed-in-the-wool *friends*. We know each other, we’ve met, I like you, I want to get to know you better. You call, you write, you care. We might even get together on occasion, if it’s geographically possible. We have somewhat common interests, or differing interests that I find intriguing. It’s personal. It’s not about professional networking, business card adds, third grade classmates, numbers, or random people.
• Flickr: If I like your photos, I’ll add you as a contact. Pretty simple. You get family or friend status if you fit into one or the other. I do lock photos as I see fit, and for some of my photos, geotagging can only be seen by friends and family, or only by me.
• Yelp: If I like your reviews, if we’re friends, or if we hang on a regular basis, I’ll definitely add you as a friend.
• del.icio.us: I have a small network, but it’s mostly because I don’t talk about my del.icio.us account much. I don’t add too many people proactively, I will add people reactively if I know them, or if they have really interesting linkage.

The simple point is that I don’t use these sites to find people, or to make friends with people, or to network with people. If it happens, it happens. However, overall, they serve as forums to interact with, or to foster relationships with, people I know. Also, it varies on how well I know you, because I’m not a perfunctory about relationships.

After every conference, I find that I receive a flood of add requests, and they always seem to be on sites where, generally, I’m not going to add people I’ve just met. After every conference, I want to write this post, and it just doesn’t happen for one reason or another, probably because, despite the many requests I receive, a post like this just seems so self-serving and egotistical. Truth is, I prefer to get to know people, and if you have my business card or my blog address, you can send me an email, tell me about yourself, and we can take it from there. Sometimes I get busy, and it takes time, but what real relationship doesn’t?

I finally got off my butt to write it because I’ve got a new account on Brightkite, a site that takes the Twitter microblogging concept to a whole new level by adding more robust geographic locating features, and allowing for cross-posting to Twitter. (Honestly, I think it would be totally hot to see some partnership between Brightkite and Yelp, so that there can be an update on an event’s page to see which Yelpers are there, but that’s just an idea.)

The same way that geotagging is sometimes personal, and I don’t give out my exact location on Twitter if I’m alone or at home, I’m going to be very selective on Brightkite. It behooved me to finally get around to explaining why.

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Dungeons & Dragons Worldwide Game Day - June 7th: Following the release of D&D 4th Edition, players everywhere can celebrate in the biggest D&D day of the year! Your library can participate too! Please visit this Wizards of the Coast webpage and click How to Host a D&D Adventure Afternoon in Your Library at the bottom of the page.

Also, if you take this survey, you can be entered to win one of the following craft books:

• Mason-Dixon Knitting
• Kaffe Knits Again
• Bend-the-Rules Sewing
• Twinkle’s Weekend Knits
• Martha Stewart’s Homekeeping Handbook

And I lurves me some free craft books, so I thought I’d share.  One caveat: you need to get to the end of the survey to get the email address where you enter to win the book.  I’m sure that’ll cull out many entrants, and I think it’s a wicked sneaky way to do it, so I almost didn’t enter.  However, I see entering as bucking the system, so there.

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